Division 30
| 30th Infantry Division | |
|---|---|
| Participant in Syrian Civil War | |
_Logo.jpg){kind=logo}
Logo of the Division 30, which is identical to the logo of the New Syrian Army
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| Active | May—November 2015 (largely defunct) |
| Leaders |
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| Headquarters | Maryamin, Afrin and Mare', Aleppo Governorate |
| Area of operations | Aleppo Governorate |
| Strength |
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| Part of |
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| Allies |
 United States
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| Opponents | |
The 30th Infantry Division, commonly referred to as Division 30, also called the New Syrian Forces, is Syrian rebel group armed by the United States formed in mid-2015 during the Syrian Civil War to specifically fight Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in northwestern Syria.
Before the training program started, about 400 Syrian rebel fighters travelled to the border with Turkey hoping to join the program. Many of them failed to join the program. On May 7, 2015, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that nearly 90 fighters had begun their training, and a second group would begin training in the next few weeks. The vetted fighters were being trained to fight the ISIL rather than the Syrian Armed Forces. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan opened training sites for the program.
On July 12, 2015, 54 fighters from the first graduates of the program, commanded by an ethnic Syrian Turkmen colonel who had defected from the Syrian army, crossed from Turkey to Syria in a convoy of 30 pickup trucks, according to Turkish news media. They would be able to call in US airstrikes against ISIL. Each fighter that graduated was given a M-16 rifle, $400 US dollars, and 400 Turkish liras. On July 28, 2015, leader Nadim al-Hassan and an unspecified number of companions were allegedly abducted by members of the al-Nusra Front while returning from a meeting in Azaz. In a public statement, the group called for their release.
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Wikipedia